Chris Hoy proves that cycling's in our blood

Wednesday 20 August 2008 09:08 BST

With Britain's cyclists at the forefront of the olympic gold rush, the humble bicycle has never seemed more glamorous. Yet although we usually associate cycling with Paris and Amsterdam, London was one of the birthplaces of the bike - and the world's first cycle-racing star was an Englishman. the German baron Karl von Drais invented the first wooden "running machine" in 1817. With no pedals, the rider rested his feet on the ground, cutting a slightly ridiculous figure. Yet when the invention reached London two years later, having been picked up by a cartwright called Denis Johnson, it was the sensation of the season.

Johnson called his vehicles "velocipedes", but Londoners called them "dandyhorses", after the society fops who adopted them. the dandyhorse was "the nothing" of the day, grumbled the poet John Keats, and London magistrates cracked down on riders by fining them two pounds for riding on pedestrian paths. But the lack of pedals meant that riders quickly wore out their boots, and within months the fashion was dead.

Yet the innovations kept on coming. in 1839 a scottish blacksmith built the world's first mechanically propelled cycle. three years later the world's first cycling accident was recorded in Glasgow. And by the 1870s a Coventry man, James starley, had come up with the smoothest bicycle yet, the penny-farthing.

Although Dunlop's pneumatic tyres meant bikes were safer than ever, London's authorities remained suspicious of the new craze. With cyclists banned from Hyde Park until the 1890s, they went south instead.

"scores of ladies and gentlemen belonging to the upper classes could be counted on any fine morning cycling at Battersea," wrote one society diarist, "and the cycling parade there became quite one of the sights of the 1895 season."

Among them were scores of young women wearing bloomers, and the bike became a symbol of the freedoms of the New Woman. But London's Edwardian cyclists were controversial figures. And when male students demonstrated against women joining Cambridge University in 1897, they showed their contempt by hanging an effigy of a woman on a bicycle. still, the rise of the bike was irresistible. By 1900 London's Cyclists' touring Club had more than 10,000 grey-uniformed members, handing out seals of approval to inns across the Home Counties. And when the world's first cycle race was held in Paris, the winner was a suffolk man, James Moore - the Chris Hoy of his day - now buried near Cricklewood.

Cycling fell from favour with the invention of the car but it has long been overdue for a comeback. And now that London has a cycling Mayor and can surely expect a cycling prime minister, the 21st century should be a new Age of the Bicycle.

Boris and the heroes of Beijing have shown us the way. Now it is up to the rest of us to follow.